CHAPTER 5

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

The problem of how thought and language are related is one of the
major problems in contemporary philosophy, and it is particularly
troublesome for Materialism which is committed to the denial of
dualism. The main reason for the difficulty is that we do not have a
clear command of the concepts of thought and language. Consequently,
different claims about their relation are possible -- depending on
how "thought" and "language" are understood. In
this chapter I propose to discuss their relation based on Sellars' latest
writings.

I. DESIDERATA

Any proposed theory of the relation of thought to language must be
able to meet the following conditions of adequacy.

Give an explanation for the pre-linguistic
intelligent
behavior of children. That children behave intelligently is commonly
taken for granted. This is exemplified by various behaviors: the
ability to discriminate and classify objects, the strategies and 'insights'
used by children to achieve given ends. The use of tools is an obvious
example. Even such seeming obvious actions as avoiding bumping
into things, not tripping over things, reaching to get something, not
falling from heights, must be explained. A specific recommendation would
be that any proposed theory should come to grips with the findings
and speculations of such child psychologists as Jean Piaget and Lev
Vygotsky.{1}

Give an explanation for the claims of the deaf and blind, or the
deaf and mute that they had thoughts prior to learning a language; e.g.,
the case of Helen Keller and I. Ballard.{2} Also take into account the data available about
children growing up in isolation from language, such as the case of
Victor, the "wild boy of Aveyron," who was found in
Southern France in 1799; the Indian girls Kamala and Amala, who
were found in Midnapur, India, in 1920; Kaspar Hauser, who was found
near Hanover in 1823; and the girl Genie, who was found in 1970.{3}

Give an explanation for the seemingly intelligent behavior of
animals as reported by such ethologists as Konrad Lorenz.{4} Animals manage to
move about avoiding obstacles and dangerous situations. They
stalk and kill effectively. Sometimes they use tools for certain ends. And
some of these tool discoveries seem to be passed from generation
to generation. For example, the learned behavior of Japanese
macaques of Koshima Island to wash sand from sweet potatoes and grains of
wheat before eating them. Explain the communication between
animals: e.g., the dance of the bees, chimps and gorillas using a sign
"language,"{5} dolphin communication.{6}

Account for the possibility of humans learning a language. How
is it that humans are able to learn a conventional language such as
English, while no other animals can -- not even the chimps and
gorillas (Washoe, Koko). What resources are needed to learn a language?

Account for the existence of a distinction in our language
between thoughts and language. We do make a distinction between these
and describe them as if they were independent. And how do we account
for such phenomena as our ability to perceive much more than we
have words to express. For example, we can distinguish between various
hues of colors for which we have no names. Then there is the
phenomenon of not being able to express what we are thinking, or
not finding the adequate words which express our thoughts. How is this
possible?

Distinguish, if possible, a human use of language from an ideal
computer's. Can an ideal computer be said to be intelligent? What
criteria must be satisfied? Is the Turing test adequate?{7} Some claim that the
existence of Gödel's incompleteness theorem makes it
theoretically impossible for a computer to think.{8}

Relate the theory of thought and language to the findings of
brain research. For example, is the theory consistent with our knowledge
of various forms of brain dysfunctions, such as, aphasia, agnosia,
etc.?{9}

I am not proposing to consider all these -- that would be a
staggering
undertaking. I am only suggesting that any adequate theory of
thought
and language must do justice to these questions and explain the
phenomena. What I will try to do is at least not write in such a way
as if I were totally unaware of these areas of research, and I certainly
don't want to claim anything that goes counter to what is well established
by science.

II. THOUGHT AND CONVENTIONAL LANGUAGE

Philosophers are divided on whether thought can exist prior to the
acquisition of a conventional language. As a first approximation, it
appears that behaviorists favor the total dependence of thought on
language. I have in mind Watson, Ryle, Wittgenstein, Malcolm,
Skinner,
Rorty, Quine, and Rosenberg. The "mentalists" or
"cognitivists" appear to favor the partial independence
of thought from language. I have in mind Descartes, Locke, Kant,
Husserl, Russell, Moore, Lewis, Piaget, Hall, Marras, Chisholm,
Castañeda, Chomsky, and Fodor.

On first impression, I would place Sellars with the behaviorists and
ascribe to him the view that thought is dependent on language. And
looking over the critical literature on Sellars, this view is sometimes
ascribed to him.{10} In general, the shared claim of Sellars' critics
is that language genetically presupposes, at least, some kind of sign
understanding. These critics would all probably agree with the
following observation made by Nelson Goodman:

The linguist may be forgiven for a vocational
myopia that blinds him to all symbol systems other than languages. Anyone
else recognizes that gestures, nods of approval and disapproval,
pointings, facial expressions, bodily demonstrations, sketches,
diagrams, models, play an important role in the acquisition and
inculcation of skills of all sorts; and that mastery of symbols of
many of these kinds occurs before, and aids enormously, in the acquisition
of language.{11}

The implication of this kind of criticism, if it is directed towards
Sellars, is to attribute to him the belief that the necessary condition of
having awareness, thoughts, and symbolic or conceptual abilities is the
possession of a conventional language. All these critics, in rejecting
Sellars' alleged account of thought and language, accept the
existence of thoughts as genetically prior to language. A seeming corollary of
this is the claim that we have concepts prior to language, and that we
use symbols prior to language, that there are "natural signs"
prior and independently of "conventional signs,"{12} and, to borrow
the title of Fodor's book,{13} there is a "language of thought"
prior to the language of speech.

I had similar misgivings about Sellars' position, but after much
reflection I would not make such interpretations of Sellars, at least not in
these ambiguous, vague, and somewhat elliptical ways. I wouldn't even
use the same formulations which Sellars himself actually uses about his
views, and not without disambiguation, and setting the theses in a
context. How could Thurston, for example, make her claim be
consistent with a passage such as:

The 'linguistic model' begins to look far too
narrow and specialized to capture the nature of thinking, even at the strictly
human level -- let alone in the sense in which animals think.{14}

I grant that a limited reading of Sellars would suggest the
interpretation that thought is dependent on language, especially if it is based of
his celebrated "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind",
where
we find the notorious passage cited by Thurston:

all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc.,
in
short, all awareness of abstract entities -- indeed, all awareness
even of
particulars -- is a linguistic affair.{15}

But a more extensive reading of Sellars would unearth such
passages as: "there is a legitimate sense in which animals can be said
to think."{16}

Sellars comes to grips with these misinterpretations of his position
only after 1980 in his two essays "Behaviorism, Language and
Meaning" and "Mental Events."{17} His opening
statement in "Mental Events" is:

I find that I am often construed as holding that
mental events in the sense of thoughts, as contrasted with aches and
pains, are linguistic events. This is a misunderstanding. What I have held
is that the members of a certain class of linguistic events are thoughts.
The misunderstanding is simply a case of illicit conversion, the
move from 'All A is B' to 'All B is A'.{18}

Sellars is clearly expressing the view that there are thoughts which
are independent of language. In "Behaviorism, Language and
Meaning," he tells us that:

Thus viewed from the standpoint of methodology,
verbal behaviorism is perfectly compatible with the idea that there
are pre-linguistic representational activities.

Indeed, the ability to have primitive representational episodes might
be not only pre-linguistic, but innate .{19}

It is clear that Sellars does not deny pre-linguistic representational
abilities, as Marras, for example, seems to contend quite explicitly.

How is this misunderstanding to be explained? It has something to
do with the way Sellars characterizes a language, and how he
determines which characteristics are essential to it and which ones are not. In
"Behaviorism, Language and Meaning" and
"Mental Events," Sellars introduces the notion of a Representational
System (RS), of which a Language (L) is a species, by which
"the organism constructs maps of itself in its environment, and
locates itself and its behavior on the map."{20} He adds,

Such representational systems (RS) or cognitive
map-makers, can be brought about by natural selection and transmitted
genetically, as in the case of bees. Undoubtedly a primitive RS is
also an innate endowment of human beings. The concept of innate
abilities to be aware of something as something, and
hence of pre-linguistic awareness is perfectly intelligible.{21}

But isn't this last sentence in contradiction with, "all awareness
of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short, all awareness of abstract
entities -- indeed, all awareness even of particulars -- is a linguistic
affair" ?{22} Before accusing Sellars of a contradiction, the
more sympathetic approach is to accuse Sellars of a carelessness
of formulation and of an ambiguous use of words. It is the latter
approach that I will take.

The source of the muddle lies in a failure by Sellars to remind the
readers in the appropriate contexts of the distinction between a
Representational System and a Language. And because he rarely
writes about thoughts with an RS context presupposed, but with a clear L
context presupposed, the result is the appearance that Sellars
ascribes thoughts to language users only.{23}

I will examine both RS and L, and their relation, starting with an RS.
But before I examine the details of an RS, let me just point out some of
the claims made about an RS. One claim is that the necessary
condition for thought (of any type) is the possession of an RS. Another claim is
that RSs are possessed by some animals and pre-linguistic children, as
well as by language users. Still another claim is that an RS may be a
genetic endowment.

The RS-L distinction, though formulated explicitly in "Mental
Events," has precursors in Sellars' writing. The first time that
Sellars made a similar distinction was in "Language, Rules
and Behavior" , published in 1949 -- his fourth publication. Here he
made the distinction between 'tied symbol behavior' (corresponding
to RS) and 'rule-regulated symbol behavior' (corresponding to L).{24} In Science
and
Metaphysics,{25} Sellars stresses the distinction between 'non-
conceptual representations' and 'conceptual representations'. So
the distinction seems to be something that may have been
presupposed by Sellars in all his writings.

How does this distinction between RS and L shed light on the
misleading passages in Sellars? Let me explain it this way. RS can
be viewed as a truncated analogue of L. As such, many concepts
appropriate to L will also be appropriate in an analogous manner to
RS.

To make a distinction between concepts appropriate to L and RS,
I will use Sellars' device of placing a prefix to a word to represent the RS
analogue of an L concept. In doing this, I want to point out that
Sellars' own practice here is ambiguous. He uses the 'ur-' prefix convention
in some places to designate a pre-conceptual ability;{26} but at other
places he uses it to designate a primitive form of a concept.{27} In view of this
ambiguity, I will use the prefix 'ur-', to designate a primitive concept
of L, and the prefix 'rs-' to designate an analogue in RS. One source
of the misunderstanding of Sellars can, then, be explained by a failure to
note, or appreciate the 'tied symbol behavior' (RS) versus 'rule-regulated
symbol behavior' (L) distinction.

But another source of misunderstanding may be due to Sellars'
terminology. Sellars uses psychological verbs and their
nominalizations, for the most part, to characterize only the behavior of humans with
a language because he believes that the necessary condition for
ascribing appropriate psychological states to a mature human subject is that
the subject possesses a language. Thus, Sellars ascribes awareness,
thoughts, knowledge, beliefs, etc. (in a primary sense) only to
language users. And he denies that these ascriptions -- in the primary sense
-- can be made to pre-linguistic animals and children. Of course
Sellars' manner of speaking goes counter to a widespread linguistic
practice of using psychological verbs and their nominalizations to characterize
animal behavior. So the impression is left in the reader's mind that
Sellars denies psychological states to pre-linguistic children and
animals.

But such a conclusion is only a half-truth. For, in fact, Sellars has
always claimed that psychological ascriptions can be made to pre-linguistic children and animals in a derivative, analogous manner; as is
clearly presented in the following passage:

Not all 'organized behavior' is built on linguistic
structures. The most that can be claimed is that what might be
called 'conceptual thinking' is essentially tied to language, and that, for
obvious reasons, the central or core concept of what thinking is
pertains to conceptual thinking. Thus, our common-sense understanding of
what sub-conceptual thinking -- e.g., that of babies and animals --
consists in, involves viewing them as engaged in 'rudimentary' forms of
conceptual thinking. We interpret their behavior using conceptual
thinking as a model but qualify this model in ad hoc and
unsystematic ways which really amounts to the introduction of a
new notion which is nevertheless labeled 'thinking'. Such analogical
extensions of concepts, when supported by experience, are by no
means illegitimate. Indeed, it is essential to science. It is only when
the negative analogies are overlooked that the danger of serious
confusion and misunderstanding arises.{28}

It is clear, then, that Sellars ascribes thinking, or, more precisely, in
my new terminology, 'rs-thinking' to pre-linguistic children and animals.
What is not clear, as the above passage expresses, is the difference
between a Language and a Representational System. Let's turn to
this task.

III. REPRESENTATIONAL SYSTEMS AND LANGUAGE

In this part I want to demarcate an animal representational system,
RS, which suffices for the occurrence of a 'mental event', from a
conventional human language, L. Such a demarcation is implicit in
Sellars' writings, but it is explicitly presented only in his recent
article "Mental Events" . A great deal of obscurity has been
removed for me from Sellars' writings by this essay. Understanding
this demarcation has helped me to understand much of Sellars'
previous writings, and many things have fallen into place. This demarcation
enables us to appreciate Sellars' insistence over the years that the
presence of concepts is totally dependent on the presence of a
conventional language.

A demarcation between an RS and L will enable us to understand
the following claims, which, I believe, Sellars makes.

An L is a species of RS.

Some animals have an RS.

No non-human animal (in fact) has L.

No non-human animal (in fact) has concepts.

'x has concepts' is equivalent to 'x has L'

In the following discussion, I am assuming that we are dealing with
animals having the capacities of at least rats. I am also assuming
that a teleological description of, for example, rat behavior is
appropriate; specifically, that it is appropriate to describe a rat, for example, as
wanting something, as searching for something, as avoiding
something, and so on.{29} It
is with this kind of background assumption that the following
discussion proceeds. In one sense, it explains why teleological descriptions are
appropriate.

Minimally, to have an RS something must represent something else.
Call the representing state a "symbol" and the
represented thing an "object." But immediately Sellars rejects any
claim that such a correlation, even a multitude of such correlations, is
sufficient for an RS. Note that this objection is enough to indicate for
us that Sellars would reject a "private language" as
depicted by Wittgenstein. Such a purported "language" was to
consist of the sign 'E' standing for some private state or object. The privacy
here is not relevant. Sellars would also reject a so-called
"public language" as a language, which consisted of the sign 'E'
standing for some public state or object. But worse, neither of these so called
'languages' would even qualify to be RSs. What more is needed is
a variety of kinds of correlations -- a complexity. He suggests that in
order to have an RS "this correlation may essentially
involve other correlations -- thus between it and other representational
states and between representational states and actions."{30} He presents this
more explicitly elsewhere:

To be sure, the child must also acquire the ability
to respond to cases with the right words, but until these response
patterns have been integrated with intra-linguistic moves and
language-departure transitions, they have no conceptual character and do not even
count as labels.{31}

So far, then, Sellars is claiming that an organism in order to have an
RS must have, as necessary conditions, the following three
characteristics:

An organism correlates symbols with objects which
are in the environment (or in itself).

All these correlations are to be understood as causal relations. In
addition, (ii) is to be understood as an association of symbols, and
can
be called a 'Humean inference'.{32} He adds that these symbols in order to be
functioning in an RS must have propositional form, i.e., these
symbols
must "represent an object and represent it as of a certain
character."{33} The fact that our language is of the subject-
predicate form, he implies, is an accidental feature, and does not by
its
presence demarcate an L from an RS. The function of predication
could
be accomplished by means other than using a separate predicate
word:
for example, by the fact that a symbol itself has a certain character.
Thus it is possible to represent the fact that a car is white by writing
the
word 'car' in a special way -- let's say by using a particular font, or
by
writing it in a particular color, or by writing it in a particular size, or
whatever. Sellars constructs such an alternative language -- calling
it 'Jumblese' -- which dispenses with predicate words in
"Naming and Saying."{34} He cautions that the idea that "the
presence or absence of a subject-predicate structure marks a radical
difference between linguistic and non-linguistic RSs" constitutes one of
"two fundamental flaws in traditional conceptions of the
mental."{35} The other flaw, which I will just mention but not
discuss, is "The notion that essential to mental events is the
involvement of abstract entities."{36} But in any case, the possession of sentence
analogues can be ascribed to some animals: "a certain
representational state of a trained rat could be said to be a 'This is
a
triangular' state, and hence to express the proposition that this is
triangular."{37} Having described an RS so far, we should
compare it with Sellars' description of a conventional language. The
fullest exposition of the nature of language is in "Some
Reflections
on Language Games" ;{38} but more succinct presentations are given in
other
writings. The following is a good description:

Essential to any language are three types of
pattern governed linguistic behavior.

(1) Language Entry
Transitions:

The speaker responds, ceteris paribus,
to objects in perceptual situations, to certain states of himself, with
appropriate linguistic activity.

(2) Intra-linguistic
Transitions:

The speaker's linguistic conceptual episodes tend
to occur in patterns of valid inference (theoretical and practical), and
tend not to occur in patterns which violate logical principles.

(3)
Language Departure Transitions:

The speaker
responds, ceteris paribus, to such linguistic conceptual
episodes as 'I will now raise my hand' with an upward motion of the
hand, etc.{39}

Sellars is constructing here a model of a conventional language. It
is
clear to me that he lists the necessary conditions for a language,
and
it is clear that they are generically almost identical to the necessary
conditions for an RS. So it is clear that these cannot be sufficient for
L.
But before I state the demarcating characteristics between an RS
and
an L, the above characterizations of L need some amplification and
qualification.

The first crucial point is that each type of transition in L is a causal
relation, as it is in RS; and in the linguistic context the intra-linguistic
transitions are described as being 'inferential' -- again, as they are
in
RS. These causal transitions are as follows. In the case of a mature
language user, the language entry transition consists of being
caused
to respond with an observation (perception) sentence to sensorial
stimuli; intra-language transitions consist of being caused to
respond
to the stimulus of a sentence with another sentence; while language
departure transitions consist of causally responding to a sentence
expressing an intention by an appropriate movement.

The second crucial point is that in each type of transition a
proposition
is involved, as it is in RS. Propositions are sentences or their
analogues
(in some medium) functioning in the perception-inference-action
roles.
The concept of a proposition (which some may identify with a
thought)
is a concept of something that is translinguistically analogical to
other
languages or language-like structures (see below the chapter on
Behaviorism). To talk of propositions, according to Sellars, is to talk
abstractly about the role a sentence plays in a language or a
language
analogue. What is abstracted from is the peculiar linguistic medium
or
vehicle of expression. As an example, "Das ist rot" ,
"This is red" , and "RED" (in Jumblese)
express
the same proposition by playing a similar role in the observation-
inference-action transitions in their respective linguistic mediums.

The third crucial point is that in the cited passage Sellars uses the
term
'transition' in contrast to 'action.' He argues that not all linguistic
events
are actions. Indeed such central kinds of events as the three kinds
of
transitions, i.e., perceptual takings, inferences, and volitions, are not
actions for Sellars (and never become actions) for the simple reason
that they are not the sort of thing that can be done on purpose. For
example, "One can decide to look in the next room,
but
not to take there to be a burglar in the next
room."{40} For perceptual
responses are, as such, involuntary -- passions rather than actions.
In
the case of inferences, one can infer from seeing smoke that there
is a
fire, but it sounds odd to say that one decides to infer that there is
fire.
As to volitions,

I have emphasized that volitions are
not actions but acts in the Aristotelian sense of actualities.
It
does not make sense to speak of willing to will to do A, anymore
than
it makes sense to speak of willing to feel sympathy for someone.{41}

Sellars' view of language as composed of non-actions appears at
first
sight to be in basic disagreement with the later Wittgenstein's, J.
Austin's, and the earlier J. Searle's views that language is
composed of
speech actions . Sellars is rejecting the claim that the
performance of speech actions is basic. Of course he agrees that
humans perform speech actions, but these, according to him, are
explainable by speech non-actions. And if we take stock of G.
Harman's
essay "Three Levels of Meaning,"{42} as does Sellars,
there may not be disagreement. There may simply be different
types of
interests. Sellars summarizes these three levels of interest as
follows:

One group takes as its central theme the idea
that
language is, so to speak, the very medium in which we think, at
least
at the distinctively human level. Another finds its clue in the fact of
communication. Still another focuses its attention on the kinship
between such linguistic acts as stating and promising and a broad
spectrum of social practices.{43}

These three levels are hierarchically related: the third presupposes
the
second, which in turn presupposes the first. Sellars' interest is with
the
first; whereas Wittgenstein, Austin, and Searle, from this perspective,
were interested in the third level.

An RS is, as we see, analogous to an L. Both have entry, inference,
and
exit transitions. And the elements of both are propositions. Included
in
the intra-RS transitions are transitions in conformity to inference
patterns, such as, seeing smoke causing an expectation of or
looking
for fire; or seeing lightning causing an expectation of thunder. RS-
inferences, in short, are to be characterized by causal transitions,
which
in the context of RS are called 'Humean inferences'.

Who has an RS? Some animals and pre-linguistic children. And, as
Sellars implies, language users may at times operate in a distinct
RS,
i.e., distinct from their conventional language. This seems to be true
of
musicians and painters: "One is tempted to say that the
musician
not only thinks about sound, but also 'in sound',"{44} and

visual perception itself is not just a
conceptualizing
of colored objects within visual range -- a 'thinking about' colored
objects in a certain context -- but, in a sense most difficult to
analyze,
a thinking in color about colored objects.{45}

So far we have described a truncated form of L which is equivalent
to
an RS. And it is obvious from his remarks on animal behavior that
Sellars does attribute to animals an ability to have an RS. And if the
having of an RS is sufficient to have thought, then animals
possessing
an RS have thoughts. This sign use by animals is to be understood
by
analogy to a conventional language. But if the term 'language' is
restricted to a conventional language, then, of course, nothing else
will
be a 'language' unless it can be sufficiently analogous to our
language.
But to say that requires asking the question: What else is necessary
for
a conventional language which is missing from an RS?

A. META-REPRESENTATION

What amendments are needed, then, to move from RS to L? The
obvious choice is to say that reflection has something to do with it,
and
to say that the minimal addition needed for this is the ability to have
meta-representations. The position would then be that human
thought
is distinct from animal thought in including meta-thoughts.

But this won't do for Sellars. We encounter passages such as the
following:

Just as animal representational systems are, so
to
speak, minimal, so the animal's representation of its mapping
activities,
its meta-representations are equally primitive or minimal.{46}

and,

A child can have an ur-awareness of an
ur-awareness
which is adequate to play a role of self-awareness in primitive
mapping
activity, without being aware of it as a 'mental' activity; indeed
without
being aware of it as an 'inner' as contrasted with 'overt'
representational activity. This contrast is a highly sophisticated one.
Thus an ur-representation of ur-
representation as representations should not be supposed
to
represent them as judgments, or inferences, as involving singular
terms,
predicates, or modalities.{47}

In view of this complication, Sellars' position is not that animals and
young children do not have thoughts or meta-thoughts, but that
they do
not have sophisticated types of thoughts or meta-thoughts,
as
is expressed in the following passage:

ability to represent these
representational
episodes with any degree of adequacy might presuppose a degree
of
sophistication which comes only with the mastery of language.{48}

B. MEDIATING PREMISES AND LOGICAL TERMS

The suggestion as to what else is needed for a language is given
in this
passage:

the notion of a language which enables one to
state
matters of fact but does not permit argument, explanation, in
short reason-giving, in accordance with the principles
of formal logic, is a chimera.{49}

The key difference between RS and L lies, then, for Sellars, in the
kinds
of inferences that are possible within these systems. We could call
them
respectively RS-inferences and L-inferences; instead, Sellars calls
them
'Humean inferences' and 'Aristotelian inferences', respectively.{50} The difference
between them seems to be that Humean inferences are unmediated
by,
while Aristotelian inferences are mediated by premises. An example
of
the former is:

'Smoke here', 'fire nearby'

An example of the latter is:

'Smoke here', 'If smoke anywhere, then fire
nearby',
'fire nearby'

The key difference, then, between RS and L seems to lie in the
availability of mediating premises for L, but not for RS.

Immediately the objection can be raised: Hasn't Sellars granted to
animals the ability to entertain propositions; hence, premises? He
has,
indeed. So the presence or absence of mediating premises is not
the
key difference. The crucial difference lies in the nature of these
mediating premises, and in the nature of the available propositions
generally. The key is that the sentences of L contain logical and
modal
terms, such as: 'not', 'and', 'or', 'implies', 'equivalent', 'all', 'some',
'necessarily'; and such meta-words (i.e., a syntactical and
semantical
vocabulary) as: 'sentence', 'judgment', 'subject', 'predicate',
'operator',
'means', 'valid', etc. So Sellars' claim becomes minimally that a
necessary condition for L is the availability of a logical vocabulary.

I should point out that the staunchest defender of the private
language
thesis, Henri-Neri Castañeda, agrees with this understanding
of
a language:

Certainly Wittgenstein is entitled to define 'private
language' as he pleases. And if on his definition a private language
has
no logical words, or only a sign 'E,' I agree that private languages
are
impossible.{51}

C. AUXILIARY POSITIONS

In "Some Reflections on Language Games," Sellars
called
mediating premises 'auxiliary positions'{52}, and in "Mental Events" mentions
their
similarity to Quine's 'standing sentences'.{53} Let us take as an
example of an auxiliary position the sentence 'All A are B'. Now
from a
formal point of view, from this sentence in conjunction with 'This is
an
A' we can deduce 'This is a B'. But the status of the sentence of the
form 'All A are B' may vary from a logical or conceptual relation
between the A and B, to a causal connection, to an accidental
relation.
To mark the distinction, Sellars introduces correlative principles of
inference which are on a meta-level. These are divided by Sellars
into formal and material principles of inference.
Elsewhere,{54} Sellars uses the Carnapian terminology of
logical
rules (or L-rules), and physical rules (or P-rules). These are meant
to
capture, respectively, the notions of analytic and synthetic
propositions.
But he refrains from using the word 'analytic' because of its
ambiguity.
In "Is There a Synthetic A Priori?"{55} and in
"Empiricism and Abstract Entities,"{56} he distinguishes
a narrow and a broad definition of 'analytic' -- 'analytic-2' and
'analytic-1', respectively. A proposition is analytic-2 "if it is either a
truth of logic or is logically true."{57} A proposition is
analytic-1 if it is "true by virtue of the meanings of the terms
involved."{58} And the meaning of descriptive terms, for
Sellars, includes the specification of causal laws. Thus, Sellars' analytic-1
includes what traditionally are taken to be synthetic sentences. And
for Sellars "'synthetic' will be used to mean neither logically true
nor logically false."{59} Thus 'synthetic' is to contrast with 'analytic-2';
not with 'analytic-1'. Sellars has thus made possible an overlap between
the synthetic and the analytic-1. And his formal-material distinction
corresponds, then, to the analytic-2 -- (analytic-1 cum synthetic)
distinction. Sellars himself is troubled by whether he has embraced
a version of the synthetic a priori, and whether this is an offensive
type of a priori. He concludes that the acceptance or rejection of a
'synthetic a priori' depends, then, on how the phrase is interpreted. And on
the above interpretation, he does accept a version of it.{60}

I have been talking indiscriminately about the mediating premises
as 'positions', 'propositions', 'principles', 'rules', and I should add
'norms' to this list. The language of positions is used in the context of
causal responses; the language of propositions is used in talking about
linguistic function; while talk of rules, principles, and norms
presupposes a metalanguage and the performance of actions,
which are subject to evaluation (criticism). At the moment, I don't want to
enter into these distinctions. All that is important for our present purposes
is that L is distinguished from an RS by the availability in L of 'auxiliary
positions'.

1. ADDITIONAL AUXILIARY POSITIONS: VALUES

Sellars' discussion of 'auxiliary positions' in "Some Reflections
on Language Games" is misleading by being restricted to a
discussion of forms such as 'All A are B' and the correlative formal
and material principles of inference. For as Sellars himself would
acknowledge, the discussion of L should be seen from the
perspective of values in general, and practical reasoning specifically.{61} Thus, talk of
rules of inference presupposes the existence of such epistemic values as
desire for consistency, coherence, truth, predictability, and explanation.

Sellars talks about value statements in Science and
Metaphysics{62} as occurring in "first level
discourse", implying that auxiliary positions should be expanded. He
regiments value statements to the form: 'Would that p'. Let us use 'would' as
our valuation operator.{63} All discourse, in fact, for Sellars, implies values.
And if values are seen from a hierarchical perspective, then, for Sellars,
all "ground-floor valuings . . . are dominated by an over-arching
ego-directed valuing expressed, in our terminology, by: Would that I led
a satisfying life."{64} He calls this the principle of Rational
Egoism.{65} This is a
controversial thesis, and I will not discuss it. I am not concerned
here with the correctness of this specific principle, or how it relates to the
moral 'Would that we led a satisfying life'. All that I am concerned
with is the logic of the situation, namely that 'Would that p' sentences
are basic to understanding Language.

Incidentally, I am puzzled by the fact that commentators on Sellars'
theory of practical reasoning often omit even mentioning the 'Would
that p' form. This is true of H-N. Castañeda, B. Aune, and W.
Solomon.{66} Solomon, for example, writes: "Sellars'
account of practical reasoning encompasses three main topics: (1)
intentions; (2) volitions; and (3) the process of practical
inference".{67} Solomon is
truncating Sellars account. It actually begins with expressions of
value:
Would that p. And these are in the nature of wishes. If the wish is
believed to be (practically) possible of realization, it becomes
characterized as a desire. An intention is the desire to do the action
A which it is believed will help bring about the consequence p; while
a volition is the thought (the intention, so to say, whose time has
come) which precedes and causes the action A.{68} But, to repeat,
my main point is that Sellars' discussion of L in "Some Reflections
on Language Games" should have been expanded to include
value sentences as auxiliary positions.

2. ARE AUXILIARY POSITIONS OR RULES OF INFERENCE
DISPENSABLE?

The next question to ask is: Are 'auxiliary positions' dispensable?
Sellars replied: "it is conceivable that a language game might
dispense with auxiliary positions altogether, though at the expense of
multiplying moves."{69} This means that the function of auxiliary positions will be taken over by the correlative inference rules.

Now, are inference rules dispensable? Obviously not the formal
rules -- without them there would be no logic, and hence no language. But
what about the material rules of inference? Most of Sellars' earliest
writings are taken up by this question. And his position is that they
are indispensable to any empirical language. Since Sellars'
metalinguistic concerns are based on Carnap's work, his polemics are directed at
Carnap's position, as expressed in the following passage. The
implication of Carnap's passage seems to be that P-rules are
dispensable.

For the sake of brevity, we shall call all the logico-mathematical transformation rules of S logical or L-rules; and all the
remainder, physical or P-rules. Whether in the construction of a
language S we formulate only L-rules or include also P-rules, and,
if so,
to what extent, is not a logico-philosophical problem, but a matter
of
convention and hence, at most, a question of expedience. If P-rules
are
stated, we may frequently be placed in the position of having to
alter
the language; and if we go so far as to adopt all acknowledged
sentences as valid, then we must be continuously expanding it. But
there is no fundamental objections to this.{70}

Carnap makes two observations. The first is that P-rules are
dispensable
from an object language. But Carnap is not clear whether their
function
is to be formulated in a metalanguage, or whether it is to remain
unexpressed, or whether the function itself is translatable into an
extensional language. If Carnap means to assert the last position,
then it is tenable only if the thesis of extensionality itself is tenable.
According to Carnap, this is the thesis that:

a universal language of science may be
extensional; or, more exactly: for every given intensional
language S1, an extensional language S2 may be constructed such that S1
can be translated into S2.{71}

An 'extension sentence' is a truth-functional sentence, and an
'extensional language' is one composed entirely of truth-functional
sentences. An 'intensional sentence', by contrast, is not
truth-functional, and an 'intensional language' is one which contains some
intensional sentences. To deny the extensionality thesis all one need do is hold
that there is at least one kind of intensional sentence which cannot be
translated into an extensional one.

Now, one of Sellars' characteristics as an analytic philosopher is the
rejection of the extensionality thesis for various kinds of meta-linguistic
sentences:

Now I do not know of any successful attempt to
define the logical modalities, the causal modalities or normative
expressions in purely extensional terms, and (as already indicated) I do not think
it can be done.{72}

Intensional sentences which cannot be translated include deontic
sentences, semantical sentences, L-rules, and, as relevant to the
present problem, P-rules. A P-rule, for Sellars, is a kind of
conditional sentence which cannot be expressed either by a material
implication (truth-functional) nor by Lewis's strict implication.{73} Sellars expedient
is to introduce an new (arrow) symbol for an untranslatable intensional
causal connector which has its own peculiar logic.{74}

Once the extensionality thesis is denied for P-rules, there is the
following ambiguity to be cleared up concerning Carnap's position.
If Carnap's remarks apply only to an object language, then his
position can be granted; indeed, Sellars' program calls for an extensional
object language -- but provided that P-rules are in the metalanguage,
which, in fact, is where Sellars locates them. Sellars position is, then, this:

Material rules are as essential to meaning (and hence
to language and thought) as formal rules, contributing the architectural
detail of its structure within the flying buttresses of logical form.{75}

The other alternative for Carnap, if the dispensability of P-rules in an
object language is not to entail the extensionality thesis, or the
move to a metalanguage, is to opt for leaving P-rules in a language as
unformalized and implicit. But such an alternative in order to
become a live option must be backed-up by arguments to the effect that
ordinary language defies formalization. At best, this alternative
would suggest that ordinary language is too unsystematic to warrant
formalization. Sellars is sympathetic to the complexity, but not to the
skepticism. The philosophical endeavor must be to regiment
ordinary language through the construction of models -- despite their
shortcomings.

The second observation that Carnap made is that if the convention
is adopted to include P-rules, the result will be a perpetual change in
the meaning of descriptive words in a language. This is a correct
observation, and Sellars is quite conscious of it. In fact his theory of
induction, from the linguistic perspective, is developed with the end
in mind of discovering and amending P-rules; which amounts to the
claim that a theory of induction is a theory of how to change language.
Sellars, in fact, put it almost identically: "I regard rules of
inductive inference as rules for the reasoned change of a language."{76}

The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that though auxiliary
positions are dispensable, their correlative L-rules and P-rules are
not. And this marks the distinction between an L and an RS.

D. APING REASON

But the inclusion or exclusion of auxiliary positions or rules of
inference in L locates the difference but does not express it. The difference is
more fundamental. The essential demarcation between RS and L
lies, as has been noted, in the availability of logical and modal words in
L, and their unavailability in RS.

The obvious objection to this -- an objection which I have entertained
for a long time, and which I thought was the Achilles' heel of
Sellars'
philosophy -- was to think that animal behavior displays an analogy
to
logical inference. And therefore, I thought, the difference between
L and
RS is drawn at the wrong place. But is it drawn at the wrong place?

Sellars is quite aware of behavior in animals which resembles
logical
inference -- it is what has already been referred to by Sellars as
'Humean inference', and which B. Russell described as 'animal
inference'.{77} Sellars
also notes that Leibniz spoke of this as a "consecutiveness
which imitates reason."{78} An example of a Humean inference, it will be
recalled, was: 'Smoke here', 'fire nearby'. And it resembles the
Aristotelian inference: 'Smoke here,' 'If smoke anywhere, then fire
nearby', 'fire nearby'. The resemblance lies in the transition from
similar initial states to similar end states, i.e., from an analogous
observations of 'Smoke here' to analogous mental states of 'Fire nearby'.

The objection may be pushed further. It can be conceded that the
difference between RS and L is in the availability of the auxiliary
positions. But this is an accidental distinction. For, after all, Sellars
himself had admitted that such positions are dispensable. Their role
can be taken over by the rules of inference.

Are we to attribute an awareness of rules to animals? How would
that be possible? Rules are, after all, formulated in a language. And if an
animal has rules, they must be contained in a meta-RS.

Yes, the objector may continue, Sellars has conceded that animals
may be said to have meta-representations. So why can't we attribute to
them rules expressed in a meta-representation?

To answer this objection, we have to start by pointing out that
Sellars distinguishes between rule-conforming (or rule-patterned) and
rule-following (or rule-regulated) behavior. The difference between
them is that rule conforming behavior does not involve the formulation of a
rule as an element in conscious thought, while rule following behavior
does. For example, a rat, after being trained to run a maze, has a
representation of the maze in the sense that given the proper
context, being in one position of the maze will trigger off a series of
appropriate responses. Now contrast this with a human car driver who consults
a map to guide him in his journey. The 'map' in the rat's case is not
something consulted; whereas in the driver's case it is. To keep to
the metaphor, the rat acts non-consciously in conformity to the path on
the map; the driver acts by consciously following the path on the map.

Inference rules are, then, rules which are available for consultation.
While no rules are available for consultation to an RS organism. The
reason is this. A rule is, as Sellars points out, always a rule of action
of the form: 'If you want to bring about the result R, then if the
circumstances are C, then you must (ought, may, may not, cannot,
etc.) do action A'.{79} It
is because an RS organism cannot infer through the process of
obeying a rule that it cannot be said to 'infer' in the primary sense of
'inference', which is 'Aristotelian inference'. As Sellars puts it, "an
intra-linguistic move is not in the full sense an inference unless the
subject not only conforms to but obeys syntactic rules."{80}

Why is a rule (or its analogue) not available to an animal? Sellars'
answer is straightforward. An animal does not have the required
logical vocabulary that is explicitly expressed by the rule formula, nor the
logical connections (meanings) that are implied by the use of the
rule formula.

Suppose the objector responds by claiming that logical connector
analogues are available to an RS organism. For example, a rat can
be trained to respond to, let's say, a pink cube. And it refuses to
respond to other colors and volumes. Isn't this refusal to respond an
analogue of negation?

Sellars asks this question explicitly: "How can a pre-logical RS
ape the use of negation?"{81} His answer is that indeed a Humean RS
organism has the resources of accepting or rejecting a proposition, but notes
that we, as Aristotelian RSs, not only have the resources of accepting or
rejecting a proposition, but we also have the resources of affirming
or negating a proposition as well. And (our) concept of negation is not
equivalent to (our) concept of rejection. The latter concept, he tells
us, is more basic. Negation entails rejection, but not vice versa.{82}

Sellars argues that from our perspective, if an RS organism rejects
p, this entails (for us) that it does not represent p. But from our
perspective, these are equivalent for it. Now our notion of not
representing p includes representing not-p. And (for us)
representing not-p entails rejecting p (which is equivalent for the RS to not
representing p). But not representing p does not entail the
representing of not-p. Therefore, argues Sellars, "The concept
of rejection is more basic than the concept of
negation."{83} This is to say that our concept of negation is a richer concept than that of rejection.

This conclusion seems to be correct for yet another reason.
Consider the fact that we can make a distinction between the negation of a
sentence and the negation of the predicate of a sentence, i.e., 'It is
not the case that p' and 'This a in not F'. The latter entails the former,
but the former does not entail the latter. A Humean RS would fail to
make the distinction by representing both cases through the rejection of
the propositions.

If it is granted to Sellars that negation is not available to an RS
organism, then it also follows that none of the other truth-functional
logical constants are available to an RS organism as well. This
follows from the fact that truth-functions require one primitive logical
constant with negation, and all other logical constants are interdefinable with
the inclusion of the negation operator. We can make even a broader
generalization by saying that no conceptual propositions at all are
available to an RS organism since their meanings are dependent on
their logical connections with other propositions. And as a corollary,
no proposition which entails a truth-functional proposition is available
to an RS organism. Now normally a truth-functional logic or a truncated
form (which includes negation) is part of most other logics, such as
modal and intuitive logics. If that is the case, then none of these
dependent
logics are available to an RS organism either.

A specific case concerns Sellars' material rules of inference which
are correlative to 'causal laws'. He writes, "For a lucid presentation
of the fundamentals of a logic of causal modalities, see Burks . . .
"{84} In Arthur
Burks we are given the following axiom: "a causal implication
[materially] implies a material implication."{85} The significance of
this is that an RS organism, by this reasoning, lacks the concept of a
causal law because it lacks the correlative material rule of inference.

There is one last point which must be cleared up. All that has been
said
so far seems to be compatible with the view that human beings, in
possessing a language, are able to perceive negative
facts. This
is not Sellars' view. All logical operators, as well as various modal
and
semantical words, are ultimately to be located in the metalanguage.
Their role is to enable us to move from propositions to propositions.
At the object level there are only positive sentences which picture
reality. Thus, a form such as 'not-p' is to be understood as the denial of the
truth of p.{86}

With these observations in place, I can make the following
conclusions
on the difference between RS and L (using organisms). Although
both
use the entry to RS, intra-RS, and RS departure transitions, and
although both use rs-propositions, and both have
meta-representations;
because primitive RSs lack a logical vocabulary, RS organisms can,
at
best, conform to inference rules. This has the appearance of aping
reason. But only an L has a logical vocabulary which enables an L
organism to follow rules -- both formal and material. And here is a
crucial point for Sellars. To have words in one's vocabulary that are
essential in formal and material inferences is to have concepts:

the conceptual meaning of a descriptive term is
constituted by what can be inferred from it in accordance with the
logical and extra-logical rules of inference of the language
(conceptual
frame) to which it belongs.{87}

But if we expand on this by including such auxiliary positions as
expressions of value and obligation, then the broader formulation
becomes: "to express a concept is to be relevant to inferences
which can be drawn from statements in which the expression
occurs."{88}

IV. LANGUAGE AND CONCEPTS

A major contention of Sellars' philosophy is that the possession of
concepts requires the possession of a language. And anything that
does not possess a language, does not possess concepts. Which
is to
say that the possession of concepts is materially equivalent to the
possession of language. Hence, since animals and infants do not
possess a language, they do not possess concepts.

This seems to go counter to a widespread usage, especially by
psychologists, which grants to animals and pre-linguistic children
the
possession of concepts -- albeit rudimentary concepts which are
truncations or analogues of linguistic concepts. The following
passage
is typical of how psychologists use the word 'concept':

Concept formation refers to the process of
discovering
some characteristic that is common to a series of discrete objects,
and
that sets off these objects from all other objects. A concept refers to
the
description of this common element.{89}

Even psychologists who write books with titles like Language
and
Thought use the word 'concept' in this way: "any
concept is
the internal representation of a certain class of experiences"
,{90} and "a person
has learned a concept when he can with a high degree of reliability
discriminate between instances and noninstances."{91}

These descriptions of a concept by psychologists, as far as I can
tell, do not differ from talk of 'stimulus discrimination' and 'stimulus
generalization'. It seems that the statement 'S has a concept of C'
is materially equivalent to 'S has generalized C' or 'S can discriminate
C'. Peter Geach has made a similar observation about psychologists'
use of 'concept': "they would say that an animal has acquired a
concept if it has learned a discriminative response to some feature
of its environment."{92} Sellars grants to animals ""discriminative behavior" such as is found in white rats",{93} but he does not
grant
them concepts. His use of 'concept', then, is different; in fact,
restricted
to language users. It is obvious that the word 'concept' is used in
different ways not only by different groups of people, but often by
individuals within a certain group, e.g., by philosophers. To avoid
talk
at cross-purposes the term has to be disambiguated. And since we
are
concerned with Sellars' philosophy, we must try to understand how
he
uses this word.

Some people would accept the formula:

'S has a concept of x' if and only if 'S has a thought
about x'

or, put otherwise,

The necessary and sufficient condition of having
concepts is the possession of thoughts.

This, with appropriate commentary, is acceptable to Sellars. But if
it is conjoined with R. Chisholm's view that "Thoughts would be
intentional even if there were no linguistic entities,"{94} then the distinction
between RS-thoughts and L-thoughts would have to be introduced.
Sellars could agree with Chisholm that there could be RS-thoughts
even if there were no language.

For some people any word of a language expresses a concept. For
example, Geach states that it is "a sufficient condition for
James's
having the concept of so-and-so that he should have mastered the
intelligent use (including the use in made-up sentences) of a word
for so-and-so in some language.{95} This use of 'concept' is too broad for Sellars.
His synonym for this use is 'sense' (and he mentions G. Frege as his
source for this usage.{96}

Sometimes the word 'concept' is restricted to a subset of words in
a language. For Frege all grammatical predicates stand for concepts;
whereas subjects name objects. At one point Sellars expressed the
intention to use 'concept' in this sense: " I am strongly
inclined to follow his [Frege's] lead and limit the term "concept" to
predicative senses."{97} But this is not his preferred usage in most
writings. In "Language of Theories," for example, he writes,
"If one begins by listing a variety of types of expression which can
without too much discomfort be said to express concepts -- noun
expressions,
predicative expressions, logical connectives, quantifiers . .
."{98}

In "Conceptual Change," Sellars distinguishes two uses
of
the word 'concept':

In one of its less controversial uses, a concept is
something a person has, namely a certain ability, and is always the
concept of something, where 'something' is used in the broadest
possible sense.{99}

There is, however, another use of 'concept' in which one speaks of
certain entities as concepts in a sense which, though
acknowledging
that they are items which thoughts can be "of" (and,
indeed,
uses this fact to pick them out), takes the relation between these
entities
and particular minds to be an "external one.{100}

The second use has two interpretations.

Some philosophers . . . have held that concepts in
the
second sense are " objective" in that their existence is
independent -- not only of this mind or that mind, but of mind
uberhaupt. Others, while stressing their independence of particular
minds have stressed objectivity in the sense of inter-subjectivity
(compare the objectivity of institutions), and have suggested that
conceptual entities are mind-dependent in this broader sense.{101}

The first use makes a concept dependent on a particular mind. The
second use makes a concept independent of a particular mind. And
this can mean that concepts are independent of all minds; or that they
are independent of any particular mind -- though dependent on some
mind or other. The last is Sellars view.

I think that these questions about the objectivity or subjectivity of
concepts are secondary questions. The primary question is to
specify the nature of concepts. This is the problem of specifying the
category or 'genus' of a concept. Is it an object? a relation? a quality? a
function? a disposition? a capacity? or whatnot. Once this question has been
answered, then the question of objectivity can be raised.

The essential trait of a concept is that it be a term in a sentence
playing a necessary part in inferences: "to express a concept is to be
relevant to inferences."{102} But this formulation is misleading in view of the
distinction between Humean and Aristotelian inferences. What
Sellars means to say is that a concept is expressed by a term in a sentence
which is essential to an Aristotelian inference. And the necessary
constituents of a language are the three types of transition patterns,
auxiliary positions, and the principles of inference. Thus, for
example,
because the word "alas" has no (relevant)
"inferential
force" it is not a concept.{103}

To answer the categorial question, to have a concept (in the primary
sense) is to have an ability to use words in the appropriate
inference patterns. Thus W. Robinson's attempt to capture Sellars'
idea of a concept, given as: "A concept is a mind dependent ability
to be in a state which corresponds to a property"{104} won't do. This
definition would be compatible with what an RS organism has. But
the introduction of the term 'concept' by Sellars is meant to demarcate
something in human language users from what animals possess.
This sentiment is well expressed by Geach in his criticism of the
psychologists' use of 'concept':

What is at issue here is not just the way the term
"concept" is to be used, but the desirability of
comparing these achievements of rats and dogs with the performance of
human beings who possess a concept of triangle; the psychologists I am
criticizing want to play down the difference between human and
animal performances, and I want to stress them.{105}

I think this is exactly Sellars' view.

A. CONCEPTS AND INFERENCE

In the previous section, I have explained that a language involves
the possession of a logical vocabulary and inferences. In this section I
want to spell out these logical structures for particular categories.

Let's start with a proposition p. To have a concept of p, by the
requirement of formal rules of inference, we should be able to know
various logical equivalences and implications; as that 'p' is
materially equivalent to 'not not p', and that 'p' materially implies 'p or q'; that
'p and q' materially implies 'p', etc.

Next, let's consider 'physical kinds', 'particulars', or 'individuals'
generally. First, any particular must have a non-relation property,
"it doesn't make sense to speak of individuals which stand in
relations, but have no qualitative character."{106} Second, these
materially imply various capacities and dispositional, properties
expressible by causal and counterfactual implications. For example,
the concept of a match materially implies such counterfactuals as 'If x
is a match, and if x were scratched, then x would light'. And such
counterfactuals depend on the truth of such causal laws as 'All
matches if scratched, in circumstances C, light.' Indeed the concept of a
physical kind materially implies clusters of such causal and counterfactual
propositions.{107}

Next, concerning the concept of universals or properties, Sellars
makes three claims. The first is that the meaning of a universal is
dependent on the type of particular which exemplifies it. Second, since the
concept of a particular, as we saw above, depends on the physical laws into
which it enters, Sellars, after presenting his arguments, concludes,
"universals and laws are correlative, same universals, same
laws, different universals, different laws."{108} Third, Sellars
argues that the concept of a generic property is a disjunctive concept:
"the generic is, at bottom, the disjunctive."{109}

Basic factual predicates come in families of competing predicates,
one or other of which must be satisfied by every object which can satisfy
a predicate of that family. If a is not f1 it must be f2 or f3.{110}

For example, the concept of a color is that of something being
white or orange or violet or blue or red or . . . green. This means that to
have the concept of something being red is to have the ability to infer
that this thing is not green, not blue, not yellow, etc. -- "it is
obvious that being (an expanse of) red implies not being (an expanse) of
green."{111}

[Given this notion of the sortal (generic, universal) as disjunctive, we
are in a position to give a partial explication of Sellars' notorious
passage:

all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in
short, all awareness of abstract entities -- indeed, all awareness even of
particulars -- is a linguistic affair.

The assumption of this passage is that Determinables (sorts, kinds)
are to be analyzed in terms of a disjunction of Determinates. The
general formula would be:

(Concept)

If x is aware that y is Determinable, then x is aware that y is Determinate-1 or
Determinate-2 or Determinate-3 or . . . Determinate-n.

For example, in the
case of being aware that something is colored, this would translate as:

If x is aware that y is colored, then x is aware that x
is white or orange or violet or blue or red or . . .
green.

What would be the analogous situation for animals? My best guess
is
that if Sellars is right about the absence of a logical vocabulary in
animals, and animals are correctly credited with the ability to
recognize generic features, then their ability must not be represented by the
general formula above, but by the following
formula:

(Intuition)

If x is aware that y is
Determinable,
then x is aware that y is Determinate-1 or x is aware that y is
Determinate-2 or x is aware that y is Determinate-3 or . . . x is aware
that y is Determinate-n.

Notice that I have labeled one formula
'concept' and the other 'intuition'. I have purposefully used these
Kantian terms because these formulas capture, I believe, the
distinction which Sellars made between Kant's manifold of representations (=
intuitions) and the contrastive representation of a manifold (=
concepts).{111a} I have in mind the first chapter of Sellars' book Science and
Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes, titled
"Sensibility and Understanding."{111b} A Kantian intuition, for Sellars, is interpreted
to be an RS (propositional) representation. Let us call it 'rs'. We can
then formulate the distinction the following way:

(manifold of representations)

If x is aware of a manifold of rs's, then x is aware
that rs-1 or x is aware that rs-2 or x is aware that rs-3 or . . . x is
aware that rs-n.

(representation of a manifold)

If x has a representation of a manifold, then x is aware that rs-1 or rs-2 or rs-3
or . . . rs-n.

There are two other clarifications of Sellars' position
which this analysis makes possible. The first is that it explains the
distinction which Sellars makes between conceptual and
non-conceptual representations. The second is that it sheds some
light on Sellars' claim that non-conceptual representations guide conceptual
representations. (AC 1996)]

V. HOLISM

Furthermore, since the units of inference are propositions, it follows
that concepts are imbedded in various propositions. And if we try to
think through the extent of conceptual interconnections which the
characterization of propositions, particulars, and properties entail,
we will come to the Sellarsian conclusion that to have one concept
implies having many; indeed, it implies having a language game. This is
Sellars holism about concepts. So, "'conceptual structure' in this
sense refers to language games."{112} On the one hand this holism is antithetical to
the logical atomism view espoused in Wittgenstein's Tractatus{113} that "2.061
States of affairs are independent of one another.
2.062 From the existence or non-existence of one state of affairs it is impossible to
infer the existence or non-existence of another." On the other hand,
Sellars does not mean to espouse a Hegelian view that the meaning
of a concept lies in the Absolute.{114} The clue to Sellars' holism is provided by the
Wittgensteinian phrase "language game." In this sense,
each person could, first, have many languages; for example, a Manifest
Image and the Scientific Image. And as H. Brown points out in his
commentary on Sellars' holism, "we can view the individual
who learns a second (or third, etc.) science as learning a new
language."{115} Second, Sellars speaks about degrees of
mastery of a language. The implication of this is that it is possible to know
a language in disjoined fragments; thus, denying any implications for
absolute or total holism.

In conclusion, the point of this section has been to disambiguate the concept of a 'concept', and to delineate Sellars use of it. His use is that a concept is any word in a sentence which is relevant to inferences. And I pointed out the kinds of inferences that Sellars has in mind.
The upshot is that the possession of concepts is correlative with the possession of a language. And the implication of such a requirement of inferential connections needed for the possession of concepts leads to a holism about language, but, as I suggested, it need not be as extensive as the Absolute.